Has the Wolf Pack quit on the season?

Coach David Carter said as much entering this year. The team had a number of players “check out,” as Carter put it, and the year ended with eight straight losses.

After a massive switch in personnel, with four players transferring in the offseason, the Wolf Pack is headed in the same direction again this year. Nevada is riding a five-game skid and has watched a promising start to conference play (the team started 7-2) turn into a nightmare in motion.

The big question now is if this team, like last year’s team, has quit on itself, its coach and its season.

“The team has not given up,” Carter said after Nevada’s 66-64 rock-bottom loss to SJSU on Tuesday. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just that they’re fighting themselves and trying to get back that mojo we had. Sometimes when you lose it, it’s hard to get that back and you can’t get it back in one game.”

Nevada's Jerry Evans Jr. is fouled by SJSU's Jalen James during Tuesday's 66-64 loss to the Spartans. (Mark Rauh/Special to the RGJ)

That’s what Carter has to say. He can’t say, “Yep, we’ve folded up the tent. See y’all next year.”

But I agree with him. This team hasn’t quit like last year’s team did. It’s fighting in the second halves of games, something last year’s team didn’t do once it got in a hole.

Deonte Burton isn’t a quitter. Cole Huff isn’t a quitter. Michael Perez isn’t a quitter. There’s too much on the line for Burton and fellow senior Jerry Evans, who are playing their final games at Nevada, to simply quit. While this team hasn’t quit, its play of late has been indescribable. And not in a good way.

Lose on the road to Utah State, San Diego State and New Mexico? OK. That makes sense. Lose at home to Fresno State and San Jose State, which was 0-13 in league games? That makes no sense.

The Wolf Pack has no confidence right now. You can see it when Burton steps to the charity stripe. The 75 percent career free-throw shooter is 17-of-34 from the line over the past five games.

“You lose confidence when you start losing two or three in a row,” Carter said. “We’ve lost a lot of confidence. I told the guys, ‘Now you try to fight and get it back and it’s hard.’”

The lack of confidence is seeping into the team and leading to a lack of constant energy. The Pack wasn’t dogging it in the first half of its loss to SJSU, but it also wasn’t playing with the crazed intensity you’d like to see from a team with its back against the wall. Nevada played with that intensity for the opening stretch of the second half, but that has to be a 40-minute-per-game thing. That can’t come and go.

“I really don’t have an answer for that right now,” said Evans, who has just five guaranteed games left in his career. “I don’t know what it is that we need to get this ship going. It’s just something that’s not clicking and we have to figure out what it is and get to the bottom of it before it is too late.”

These are not the kind of things you want to hear from the Wolf Pack players and it shines on a light on that lack of confidence. Here’s a stat you don’t want to see, either. Over the past four seasons, Nevada is 21-11 in the first half of league play and 10-18 in the second half. We’ve seen this collapse before.

It could be a team that tires out after logging heavy minutes early in the season. It could be a coaching staff that isn’t adjusting well enough the second time through conference play. It could be a group of players that doesn’t handle adversity well once it loses a couple of games in a row. But it has to change.

And the man most equipped to pull Nevada out of the slump, Burton, is struggling. After scoring at least 15 points in 20 of the team’s first 21 games, he’s reached that mark just once in the past six outings.

Burton, who fought through the flu during this stretch, says his body is fine despite logging 38.4 minutes per game, the second most in the nation. Carter said his players are physically fine and not worn down, but they look mentally exhausted, in search of a light at the end of a tunnel filled with losses.

Nevada returns to action Saturday at Air Force, a team slim on talent that has lost seven of its last eight. This looks like a perfect game for Nevada to snap its skid, but so did the home game against SJSU.

Carter said he might shake things up and not travel Nevada’s entire roster to Colorado Springs. He said he only needs the guys who are going to play and play hard. Drastic times call for drastic measures. The Wolf Pack needs a victory.

“We need one bad,” Carter said. “I don’t think anybody saw this five-game losing streak coming. I know I didn’t. Neither did the players. Once you get into it, it’s hard to get out.”

The Wolf Pack better get out. After losing eight straight games to finish last season, the Wolf Pack could lose 10 straight to end this year. If that happens, maybe this team really did quit.

Columnist Chris Murray provides insight on Northern Nevada sports. Contact him at cmurray@rgj.com or follow him on Twitter @MurrayRGJ.